Snakes
by lulusgardenfli
Summary: Young Pony never intended on becoming a writer


**_A/N: I'm still trying to get back into The Visit. But while I wait for SOMETHING to come, here is a completely unrelated one-shot. It's Pony as an adult reflecting on Soda, school and writing. I'm trying to feel my way around my writing again, hence this little ditty._**

 ** _ETA: a new scene at the beginning._**

* * *

 **1989**

My daughter, Daphne, lounges in the recliner, her hot pink painted toenails peaking over the arm rest. A bowl filled to the brim with sour cream and onion potato chips wobbles precariously on top of her left thigh, a bowl of chocolate and peanut butter covered popcorn with, what the hell… _mustard_? Okay, _mustard_ , rests on her right thigh.

I watch, with curiosity, as she opens her mouth and pops a piece of mustard covered chocolate & peanut butter popcorn; shrugs, and bites into a potato chip.

"How is it?" I call over my stack of notebooks and loose leaf paper which is spread across the dining room table.

"Not bad, you want to try some, Daddy?"

Well, I'm always encouraging the girls to try new experiences, but for some reason I don't think this is a communion my mouth wishes to partake in.

"Im good sweetie, thanks for the offer."

But Daphne isn't listening, she's already turning the volume up on her brand new Walkman, and even though she has headphones on, I swear I can hear The Bangles telling me to close my eyes and give Susanna Hoffs my hand.

Unlike Paige, or myself, Daphne is a risk taker when it comes to food. She's eight and her favorite _cuisine_ is Lebanese. Last month Patrick dropped by with a carton Vietnamese takeover and Daphne insisted that I make pho for her lunch the next day.

She got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It is winter break and I have the girls for two more days before they go back to Aimee. Daphne is dressed in the overpriced pink sweatpants and matching hoodie from The Gap that Aimee and I got her for Christmas. Even though we're divorced we still shop together for Christmas and birthday presents.

She pulls on the string until her face disappears.

When she was little, she used to cover her eyes with her hands and crow to Aimee and me, "you can't see me!"

I put my pencil down, I usually do my outlines in pencil so I can erase and cross out as need be, and grin at Daph, "you know your Uncle Soda used to put green food colo…"

Daphne, now trying to catch pieces of popcorn in her mouth like a trained seal, audibly groans, "not the green pancakes story again!" She points to her older sister spread out like an octopus on the living room floor, Paige's long, tangled strawberry blonde hair spreading out from her head like an uncontrollable fire.

"We've heard it like a million, gazillion, no, a _bajillion_ times," Daphne says with a dramatic sigh.

Paige is reading a book, which means she is in her own little world, and not paying attention to us, or that a piece of popcorn that missed Daphne's mouth and landed on top of her hair.

"First of all, I never told you that story a _bajillion_ times, more like a mere _quarter of a bajillion times_ , get it right," I smirk.

I take a mental note _, "girls are bored with the green pancake story…"_ and store it in the back of my brain where I keep factoids such as Daphne likes lime green nail polish, but hates forest green nail polish, Paige is 'considering' being a vegetarian, except she likes chicken too much, and Daphne apparently likes chocolate and peanut covered popcorn dipped in mustard. _Shudder._

Her mouth still filled with mustard covered popcorn and the remnants of sour cream and onion potato chips, "why do you _write_?" The question pops out of the blue, but that's Daphne. We could be talking about how she was the last person standing in dodge ball, when in the middle of telling her _own_ story, she will interrupt _herself_ to add a non-sequitur about a panda bear in China who had a baby and then ate the baby.

Paige who can feel everyone's pain as her own will wince and softly whisper to herself, "that poor baby, that poor mom."

To which Daphne will look up at her big sister, "poor mom? She ate her baby, duh Paige!"

With Daphne, conversations have a way of taking twists, turns until you realize you are going 90 miles down Route 66, backwards.

Daphne pulls her hood off, revealing her snow-blonde, baby fine hair; a gene she inherited from Aimee.

Her nose crinkles up and she asks again, "no seriously Daddy, why do you write? It's soooo boring."

She asks the question like she asking me why I killed and ate _my_ baby panda.

"Well, sweetie, Daddy wanted to take a vow of poverty, but being a Benedictine monk was not in the cards, so I did the next the best thing and decided to be a writer."

Paige, who to my surprised, is listening to us, puts her dog-ear copy of _Tuck Everlasting_ down and chuckles, "Dad, the Benedictine monks don't take a vow of poverty, that's the Franciscan monks." I just shrug, wondering how my eleven year old knows the difference between the Benedictine and Franciscan monks. I'm not surprised though, Paige, although shier and less bold than her sister, is the master of arcane trivia, and esoteric factoids. I think she's going to be a minister when she grows up, I really do.

Or maybe a repeat champion on _Jeopardy_.

"No, really, why do you write? I hate writing, Mrs. Beale makes us write in cursive and I…" Before Daphne can dive into the trials and tribulations of the third grade, which from which I understand from Daph, is a passion pit (" _Kyle kissed Samantha because Dougie triple dog dared him_ "); I grin at my girls.

"Actually I didn't like writing at first…

* * *

 ** _1955_**

My parents are in the kitchen with Soda. Soda's head is in his hands, his elbows are propped up on the table. Standing, with one foot planted on the living room, my toes digging into the well-worn carpet and one foot pressing against the hard kitchen floor that is one day away from a good scrubbing; my eyes widen with disbelief.

Mom never lets us put our elbows on the table!

With a mixture of awe, dusted with envy and curiosity, I cross my foot over the invisible threshold and plant myself in the corner of the kitchen. Watching.

Usually, Soda is a tilt-a-whirl of energy; even sitting down, the shiny metallic kitchen chair does not contain his hyper joy. His energy doesn't just bounce but _smashes_ across the room; a madcap rubber ball in human form.

But tonight, the ball is deflated. He is small and compact. He sinks into the cold metal, the warn grey glow emits off our brand new T.V. that Dad won by correctly guessing the number of marbles in a giant bowl, shrouds his face.

Although his face is partly covered by his hands, I see his eyes droop and his grin flatten.

His flat line mouth does something I have only seen a few times, it curves-backwards(!) like one of Darry's flips into a frown.

I have seen Soda happy and I have seen Soda angry, but this Soda: flat, dejected and scared is horrifying.

I put my own finger on top of my lips and without realizing it; it too curves into a frown. We're twins.

I can't quiet explain it, but I feel as if all the energy in the room is being sucked into vacuum called Soda. _THRRP_

My energy goes THRRP right into him, so does Mom, so does Dad, so does Darry, even though he's watching T.V. in the living room; his body lanky and stretched across the couch.

 _THRRP, THRRP, THRRP, THRRP_

I am Soda's brother and my parents have installed in me one rule paramount above all others: stick together. Don't let anyone mess with your brothers.

I am about to run to Soda's rescue, but my father speaks, and his voice stops me dead in my tracks.

"I don't care Jo, ain't no teacher gonna tell _my_ boy he can't write. Shoot, what do she care if he writes with his left hand?"

It's not what he's says, but _how_ he's saying it. His voice is unfathomably quiet, almost somber, yet there is a hiss of anger that lies underneath his low voice. It reminds me of the snakes that hide underneath our back stoop.

" _Ain't nothin' to be afraid of boys, they ain't poisonous, but they like to hiss like they are. Just watch out for them and they won't pay you no bother."_

 _Darry will take a cautious peek, decide the snakes weren't anything to be afraid of and saunter off our stoop. Soda won't even bother to look, there could be a mountain of garden snakes and Soda would jump right into them._

 _Me, I'd look down at them little snakes, watching them. Wondering if they were afraid of me?_

"Heck, shouldn't matter if he writes with his _toes_." He stomps his foot on the last word.

 _BANG!_

I tap my own toes against the kitchen floor.

Bang.

That's when I hit my hand hits my mouth. I catch a giggle that is dangerously close to revealing my presence and instead nail my back against the wall.

I picture Soda taking off his sneakers and dirty, smelly socks, putting a pencil in between toes and writing. _Boy_ , but Soda's feet stank! He never really cared for baths, and even after taking a shower or bath, Mom would inspect him, and make him take another bath. "Soda, you're the only boy I know who gets dirtier coming out of the bath than when he went in…" Soda would stomp back in the bathroom, leaving a trail of suds and water footprints across the hallway.

I stop smiling. Soda hasn't laughed once. I am sure he would be rolling around the floor at the thought of him writing with his toes.

I am wearing Darry's Ted Tappe baseball jersey, an icon of my brother's brief infatuation with the sport; it lands down at my knees. I wear it like a monk's cilice, a thousand pricks of guilt and shame poke me.

Soda only crumbles like dust into the table.

My brother is miserable, but I'm giggling. A sick feeling of guilt bounces inside.

I touch my lips and force it into a frown so that once again, we are twins.

My parents are tall Redwoods standing over him, one on each side. Soda with his brown shirt and hair dark blonde from a recent shower almost looks like tree stump.

Dad puts a protective arm on Soda, a hot-eyed eagle on guard for snakes who make little boys write with their right hands.

Even though Dad is rare to anger he's fiercely protective of mom and us three. The result, when someone hurts one of us, his anger whips out like a malfunctioning garden hose, spraying the innocent and guilty alike with his fury.

Problem is, Soda's teacher wasn't in the room with us, so the more Dad talks, the more his anger thrashes about; his voice become louder, his hefty frame crushes into Soda.

Soda's shoulders pull up past his ears like the stuffed animals in the claw machine down at Lakeview.

My own back hunches up.

Mom, the rigor to Dad's expansiveness; gives Soda a small, warm smile that cuts through my father's well-meaning but out of control love.

"We'll work on writing with your right hand, okay Sodapop?" I look at my own hands, remembering the trick Mom taught me to tell the difference between my left and right hand.

Though Soda's back is to me, I can feel him relax a bit. Her smile makes me ease and I feel my hunched up back slide down.

"Do I gotta go back? I don't want to go back to that stupid place," he asks in a miserable voice.

I shake my head vigorously. The sadness in Soda's voice bangs against the wall and fills our kitchen until I'm almost drowning in it.

I am sure my parents won't make their son go back to that lousy place.

But then they do something that turns my stomach ice cold.

 _They laugh._

It's not a cruel laugh, or at least, it's not intended to as a cruel laugh. But their laugh which usually fills me with warmth only leaves a cold gaping hole.

How could our parents who said that they love us make Soda do something that he didn't want to? They might as well have thrown him to the snakes.

I feel as if all the sadness that Soda sucked up is being blown onto me. Sadness is cold and clammy, like bologna right out of the fridge.

Anger rises within me, and just as my four year old rage prepares to unleash on my parents, a horrific thought punches my brain.

What if my parents _couldn't_ stop Soda from going to that awful school?

What if _they_ were helpless? A million pricks, a million rubber balls, a million snakes, a million Redwoods crash on me. My breathing becomes tight and now I am the vacuum sucking up the helpless air that swirls above me.

I look at my father who always seemed like a giant to me, in more ways than one; and he never appeared so small.

If my parents can't protect Soda, how can they protect me?

"You're going to school."

When Soda doesn't respond, my dad playfully slaps his back, "come on cowboy kid, it ain't _that_ bad." There is a minor note of desperation to Dad's voice, as if he's trying to convince himself.

Soda nods slightly and Dad tells him that he's an okay kid.

But, I feel as if a Redwood has crashed on top of me. Everything I believed about my parents, that they are all powerful, all good (asides from making me eat my broccoli) are splintered beneath my feet.

Mom is the one who spots me, "have you been hiding here the whole time?"

I want to blast my own hose of fury. That it's a lousy deal to make Soda go back to a place where he's miserable, that they're lousy parents; but I'm silent.

Mom chuckles "look Darrel, our little Alger Hiss." Dad laughs and Soda shrugs his shoulder at me, an echo of his old grin inflating back onto his face.

I figure Alger Hiss must be some other little boy who is very good at hiding in kitchens. I wonder if he has snakes slithering under his back stoop?

* * *

I'm not saying that incident was _the_ catalyst for Soda hating school, but it couldn't have helped. Every afternoon Mom would work with Soda on holding a pencil and writing with his right hand, holding her own hand on top of his as they traced and retraced the letters over and over again, my mom encouraging him, "good job Soda, just five more minutes, and then we can quit…"

* * *

We are at the kitchen table, the three of us and Mom. Golden toast smothered in red jam sits on a plate. Tiny crumbs of crusts lay at my feet. Soda, who never met a piece of food he didn't like, pushes his slice away.

Darry is working on schoolwork by himself, Mom is helping Soda with his, and me, not wanting to be left out, drawing pictures of the backyard snakes on construction paper. Underneath the picture I write "SNAKS."

"Snack, that don't look like a snack, Ponyboy," Darry tells me, jam seeping out of mouth.

"It's snakes," I admonish my brother.

Darry looks over my drawing, "not bad, Pone, you're missin' the 'E' in snakes."

With a sigh, I add an 'E'.

"SNEAKS."

* * *

That afternoon Soda is in tears, his eyes puffy and pink, his mouth droops into a woebegone expression and I look down, half expecting to see it flop onto the floor like a caught fish.

But when I look back up at my brother, his eyes are tiny blazes of daggers, his mouth frozen, except for the bit of his front teeth which cut through his dried, chapped lips. "I hate school," his whispers, and like our dad, the softer his words, the more they soak the air.

He takes his paper covered with polluted clouds of eraser smears and wobbly words sliced by his teacher's angry pen mark and slams it on the floor.

I figure Soda's going to get scolded for saying that he 'hates school.' But Mom only brushes her long fingers along the back of my brother's neck.

"I know Soda, I know," she said softly. Darry, still sitting in his chair, reaches behind for the paper and smooths it out. He hands it to Mom, who gives Darry a small, knowing smile.

* * *

That did it.

If I was agnostic to the idea of school before, I became a fanatical believer that school was an evil place. I hated school; I despised the very idea of school.

Most of all, I hated writing.

Before, I would sit at the kitchen table and with my tongue sticking out of my mouth in studied concentration, write my name and other words over and over again on the scrap paper my mom would give me.

But after seeing Soda so miserable, I took my own vow of dysgraphia, and returned to using my pencils only to draw, and sword fight with Soda, the way they were intended to be used.

* * *

 _ **1956**_

I am five and starting my first day of Kindergarten. Mom, whose parents are German, tells me that Kindergarten means 'child garden.' She smiles when she says this, her cheeks red apples courtesy of Crown Drug's buy-one get-one blush.

A feeling of dread slithers through me, who else lives in gardens but _snakes_?

Mom opens the door, and for a second we look like something out of the opening credits of _Leave it to Beaver._ Darry, holding his lunch box leads the way, followed by Soda, his lunch box in one hand, a bouncing ball in the other.

But the Beave isn't in the mood.

I remember how miserable Soda is at school, I remember the snakes.

With a dramatic THUMP I fall to the floor, my fingers clawing the door frame. My legs stiff tree trunks that refuse to be moved.

Darry and Soda both think it's a riot. Mom doesn't and she pries my fingers one by one off the frame.

"I don't wanna go to school, there are snakes!"

Mom shakes her head and turns to my brothers, "have you boys been telling your brother nonsense?" If Dad can sometimes be an unwieldy garden hose when he's upset, Mom has pin prick accuracy. She gives my brothers ' _the look'_ and they both protest that they have no idea what I'm talking about.

Mom, her voice one octave short of telling me to 'cut the crap' tries to convince me that school is "fun" and that "really Ponyboy,there aren't any snakes."

When we reach Sequoyah Elementary I am not convinced, but like those old Christian martyrs I hold my head up high and walk into belly of the beast.

At snack time I shake my head _no_ when my teacher offers me an apple slice. Wasn't that just like a snake to offer innocent people a bite of the apple!

But something strange happens.

Against my wishes, against my vow, I begin to like school. I like reading stories and traveling to faraway lands all while sitting perfectly still in a posture that would make a Stylite Monk blush with spiritual envy.

When my teacher hands us pencils I am one of the few who can write his name. "Wonderful, Ponyboy!" I feel her sweetness cling onto me and while she may be a snake, I _like_ this snake.

My hands grip around the pencil, Soda's nemesis, and I start writing; my mind, my hand and the pencil forming a trinity.

But at home my guilt grows taller than the trees. I had promised myself that I wouldn't like school; I wouldn't give into temptation.

All throughout supper I am quiet, but with Darry and Soda both yakking it up about their first day, my silence slips through unnoticed.

I think about telling Mom, Dad or even Darry about my shame; but I know that these aren't the judges I need to face.

At night, sitting on Soda's bed, looking at his _Lone Ranger_ bedspread, my fingers brushing over The Lone Ranger's loyal sidekick, Tonto, I confess.

"Soda, I like school. Even if them teachers are nasty ol' snakes I _like_ my teacher."

I wait for Soda to yell at me, or to cry, and truthfully I'm not sure which one fills me with more dread. Instead Soda looks at me like I'm off my rocker.

"Huh?"

Exasperation shaded with guilt stumbles up my throat. "Soda, you don't like school or writing, but I do. I try not to like it, I really did! But when we got to write, I was the only kid who could write a real sentence Soda, did you know that? It made me feel real swell inside."

Soda does something that I don't expect, he burst out laughing, "Ol' Pone, you're crazy, you know that?"

Seeing my look of anger he quickly adds, "I don't mean nothing by it Pony. Shoot, I guess some people like to use pencils to write and some like to use pencils to sword fight. Ain't nothing wrong, I don't think."

"So," I ask sheepishly, "you ain't mad that I like to write?"

Soda smiles, "I think you're kinda crazy Pony, but I l like you a whole bunch."

Soda may be a vacuum, but more often than not he can suck away the nasty cobwebs that form gardens and forests of doubt in my mind. All Soda has to do is grin and I feel okay.

I smile back at Soda, once again, we're twins.

But my smile is hardly a few seconds old when I sniff the air, my grin crashing off my face.

"Soda,"

"Yeah, Pone."

"Move your nasty, stinky feet! _PEE YEW_! You stink!"

* * *

I am different from my brother, and this 7.5 inch cylinder of lead is the point where our story forks.

The very instrument that causes my brother misery, gives me joy. I love writing, not just the physical act of pressing lead to dead trees; but of creating worlds in my head and then watching those worlds resurrect into words and stories with a life of their own.

That next day I wrote my first 'story' "SNAEKS R NICE"

Spelling was never my strong soot.

* * *

 _ **Thank you for reading! :)**_

 _ **S.E. Hinton owns.**_

 _ **Lakeview, Sequoya Elementary, Crown Drug were (are) real places in Tulsa. Ted Tappe played for the Tulsa Oilers baseball team back in 1955.**_

 _ **I don't own Leave it to Beaver or The Lone Ranger. Or the Beave or Tonto. I don't own The Bangles, the lyrics Pony paraphrases are from "Eternal Flame" or Tuck Everlasting, or Jeopardy**_

 _ **Alger Hiss was a US government official accused of being a Soviet spy**_

 _ **Stylite Monks were monks known for standing or sitting on a pillar as way of divine communication.**_

 ** _Thank you for indulging me while I slowly try to weed through my own garden._**

 ** _ETA: a new scene at the beginning._**


End file.
